But then, he remembered, he had lain down half-hidden by the hyacinths, dog-tired in mind and body to sleep a dreamless sleep. Then he had come and watched the lights until it should be dark enough for the night to bring disguise.
Now it had come, and it was time to be going.
Whither?
As if that mattered! He had come prepared for a secret journey, and there was a hundred pounds odd in his pocket. The thought made him smile bitterly. So far as outward circumstances stood, he was in exactly the same position as he had been two years ago when he and Ted had first met in a bicycle smash. In exactly the same position since what was there to prevent his turning up at New Park in a few days, and resuming his life as Lord Blackborough? There was nothing to prevent it since the deed of gift could stand, of course; nothing but his utter weariness. It would be better to start afresh.
He looked at his watch. Yes! it was time he was off. He would walk down the coast road to Pot-âfon; thence take the cargo steamer to Liverpool. All roads meet there. He would go off to the wilds somewhere, and after a year if--if nothing changed--he could easily fabricate his own death, and let the heir come into what he did not want.
He set off for his night walk cheerfully enough. The glamour of that past day was upon him still, he seemed to hear her voice saying for him "It has been quite perfect." In reality those had been her last words, since the cry "the child! the child!" had been wrung from her by chance--by one of the unhappy chances and changes of this most unhappy world.
"It has been quite perfect." Ay! perhaps, but in the past tense. What of the present?
He paused at the bridge below the village where the mountain stream joined the river Afon, to look down to the still pool below the arch.
In the moonlight it looked very quiet. One might sleep there without dreams if people would only leave one alone, but they would not. He leant over the parapet and smiled at the oddness of one hive of swarming atoms, objecting to another hive of atoms choosing the hollow of a pool wherein to rest, interfering to fish it up and put it somewhere else in order to disintegrate into atoms again.
And after the atoms? There lay the question. The atom and the human consciousness? Were not both an equal mystery born of the unity beyond?